Brownies and Kalashnikovs Read online

  Five years later, on the eve of the Second World War, while drilling at Dammam Well No. 7, 2000 feet deeper than usual, geologists from the California Arabian Standard Oil Company (Casoc, a wholly owned subsidiary to which SoCal had assigned its concession rights in 1933), hit the largest oil deposits ever to have been found, estimated to hold 25 percent of the known reserves on earth. This immediately turned into a serious dilemma for both parties. To the Americans, the outbreak of the Second World War brought Saudi Arabia’s infant oil industry to a halt before major drilling could be started. With respect to Ibn Sa’ud, his tin trunk was empty once more as taxes from Hajj pilgrims shrank to a trickle due to the war and another severe drought had wiped out livestock and date tax revenue. Without money and food, he would lose the allegiance of the capricious Bedouin tribal leaders, the ‘ulema, and ultimately control over his tenuously cobbled-together kingdom where many were unhappy with his invitation to foreigners and non-Muslims to drill for oil. Although he had fended off criticism by citing the Qur’an’s exhortation to accept unexpected help as a gift from God, he desperately needed a flow of money to keep his critics silent.

  Ibn Sa’ud turned to the Americans with his only trump card; he held the oil concession for ransom. No money, no oil concession. This put the Americans in a real bind. Two critical sources of oil to America had been halted after the Japanese invasion and subsequent occupation of Burma and Indonesia, leaving Saudi Arabia as the only remaining source of free-flowing oil for the Allies.

  Casoc went straight to the White House and threw their impasse on the government’s desk in 1943 with a policy paper addressed to the US president describing Saudi Arabia as the “bulwark against the threat of Communist aggression in the Middle East and a force for economic and political stability in the world.”3 Their newly launched fledgling subsidiary, Aramco, they declared, would play a far more pivotal role for US interests in the region than just an economic one.

  The lobbying worked. President Roosevelt gave the green light for Saudi Arabia to be eligible for US financial assistance by Executive Order stating that the defense of Saudi Arabia was of vital interest to the United States.

  Key trainers and programmers were instantly dispatched to Saudi Arabia from the US Army, Navy, and Central Intelligence divisions to organize Aramco along the lines of the US wartime State Department, including a carbon copy of the intelligence department of the Cairo based Office of Strategic Services (OSS). In no time Aramco became home to many vaunted Arabists and early CIA operatives. The oil company was granted an exclusive exploration and production concession and became subsidized by the US Treasury. Ibn Sa’ud got his wish in 1943 with $30 million in royalty payments plus a $25 million ‘loan’ from the US government’s Export-Import Bank. This marked the beginning of the tight Al Sa’ud-American political-economic bond.

  The clincher to the Al Sa’ud-American political-economic bond took place on February 14, 1945, the day after American President Roosevelt wrapped up his historic meeting at Yalta with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet President Josef Stalin. The American President carried out a master coup of oil diplomacy on that day, which made Saudi Arabia America’s ‘best friend’ in the Islamic world. The smile on Roosevelt’s face in a photograph with Ibn Sa’ud after their negotiations on board the USS Quincy was the smile of ‘the cat that ate the canary.’

  The USS Murphy, the first American warship ever to dock at the Saudi Arab port of Jeddah, had arrived on February 12, 1945 and had taken Saudi King Ibn Sa’ud to the Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal, where Franklin D. Roosevelt awaited on board the USS Quincy in grand Bedouin style. Ibn Sa’ud would have been hard-pressed to present a more lavish spread than the one Roosevelt had prepared for him. The bow of the USS Quincy was covered by a large tent with a decorative ‘throne’ for the Saudi king in its center surrounded by Persian carpets and plush seating cushions for his substantial entourage. In deference to Muslim custom, live sheep were slaughtered daily and prepared for the king to eat. King Ibn Sa’ud regaled the Americans with his military conquest of Najd and Hijaz and the Americans regaled him in return with action documentary movies of their military might on a large screen. Meanwhile, back in Yalta, Churchill got wind of the meeting in progress and rushed to join them but arrived too late. He left furious and empty handed. By the time Churchill knocked on Ibn Sa’ud’s door, the ‘mother-of-all-oil-deals’ had already been cut by a ‘mother-of-all-pitches’ that triumphantly snatched the Saudi King away from his former supporters, the British, forever.

  The mother-of-all-oil-deals was sealed by both sides and endures until today whereupon the United States would provide security to Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia would give the United States oil.

  The general points agreed upon were:

  The United States would have access to Saudi ports.

  The United States would construct military bases on Saudi Arab soil renewable every five years.

  Aramco, dominated by SoCal and other American oil companies, would build a pipeline known as the ‘Tapline’ to Mediterranean ports (although Roosevelt tried to pitch conquered Haifa as the end port regardless of who controlled it, but ‘Abdel ‘Aziz refused).

  The United States promised not to ‘occupy’ Saudi Arabian soil in a swipe at the British who had occupied so many of Saudi Arabia’s neighboring countries. (In actual fact, the promise was more of a successful ‘new’ approach to hegemony over the Middle East and its oil resources.)

  In conclusion, Roosevelt tried to persuade Ibn Sa’ud to support a Jewish state in the Middle East by relating how horribly the Jews had suffered under the Nazis and asked the King for advice on an appropriate recompense for the survivors of the Holocaust. Ibn Sa’ud logically responded that it was not the Arabs who had harmed the Jews but rather the Nazis, so obviously the compensation should be that the Jews be given a homeland in Germany.

  Ibn Sa’ud’s tin trunk was soon traded in for a much bigger one … but not to the benefit of the Kingdom’s subjects. Ibn Sa’ud’s Wahhabi view on usury erased any organized system of distribution through banks and he continued personally to hand out the money to his Saudi subjects at whim. This archaic distribution system left most of Saudi Arabia still living in their goat-hair tents or clustered around oases in small, poorly ventilated homes of straw and mud, with no electricity, no education, and no medical care except for the fly-infested Arab Hospital that had no drugs or bandages. Ibn Sa’ud spent almost nothing on public works, apart from a few water wells.

  The benefits for the Royal Family, on the other hand, were plentiful. Aramco built two hospitals in Riyadh and in Taif which treated members of the Al Sa’ud only. Aramco also provided Ibn Sa’ud with a 560-kilometer railroad between his summer and winter residences, a Swiss chef, electric blankets and air conditioning, while the city of Riyadh and its 200,000 inhabitants remained largely without electricity. The Americans outdid themselves in remaining ‘respectful’ of local Saudi Arabian customs – slavery and punishing criminals by chopping off hands, feet and heads after Friday prayers – by delicately referring to them (in the words of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles) as Saudi Arabia’s ‘sovereign idiosyncrasies.’ In return, Ibn Sa’ud kept the country open to US military bases and oil investments. In a word, the joy and prosperity from the oil discovery was not shared by a large percentage of the subjects of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Until today, the oil wealth has yet to reach other than those in Saudi Arabia’s ruling circles and their entourage and the United States’ ruling circle and their entourage.

  And what wonders the oil proceeds from Saudi Arabia achieved for the United States’ treasury! With the oil money, the United States attained a leadership position worldwide through the Marshall Plan which labeled the United States for posterity as ‘the savior of post war Europe.’ Ibn Sa’ud’s non-commital cooperation with the West vis-à-vis the Zionist take-over of Palestine was a boon for the Zionist-American partnership. In 1948, Standard Oil Company of New Jers
ey (Exxon today) and Soconomy-Vacuum Oil Company (Mobil today) joined forces with two other oil giants, Casoc and Texaco, to become the leading oil conglomeration worldwide against their international rivals. With their undisputed hegemony over the desert Kingdom, the powerful American oil companies were now ready to fully exploit Saudi Arabia’s vast oil reserves for greatly expanded Western market outlets and huge Western capital investments. The conglomerate of oil giants would continue to openly wield total control over Aramco and Saudi Arabia for forty years until the Saudi government and Aramco were deemed developed enough under close American tutelage to safely ‘acquire’ 100 percent interest of the company.

  Made in the United States After World War II, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s image as a bona fide independent nation state with a mind of its own became a necessary one for the American oil companies’ credibility before the international community. A national anthem was ordered to boost the notion of the kingdom’s independence, composed and arranged in New York, played by the Marine Band, recorded in RCA studios and shipped to Riyadh.

  Aramco not only wrote national anthems but subsidized world famous scholars such as Harry St. John Philby, Margaret Meade and Arnold Toynbee, paid journalists in Cairo and Beirut to churn out glossies such as Aramco World (which featured my brother Ghassan in Bedouin garb for its Christmas issue in 1956), and built the Middle East Center for Research through which they established a slot in the American University of Beirut (AUB). One of AUB’s presidents was David Dodge, a former Aramco-affiliated CEO. Authors such as Walter Stegner, an award-winning novelist, historian and short-story writer, wrote books such as Discovery! The Search for Arabian Oil, which promoted Ibn Sa’ud as charting his own brave course in the creation and development of Saudi Arabia. The book ran in fourteen issues in Aramco World, but for some reason it is never mentioned in his list of works.

  What I knew as a young girl about Saudi Arabia’s history came from a movie put together in 1956 by Aramco’s Public Relations Department: a ‘documentary film’ entitled Jazirat al Arab (The Arabian Peninsula) which told the story of Ibn Sa’ud’s conquest of Arabia. The movie was so far-fetched that even Mohammed Ibn ‘Abdel ‘Aziz Ibn Sa’ud, Ibn Sa’ud’s eldest son, commented to an American employee from the US embassy who had played a small role in the movie, “I enjoyed your acting but from the point of view of history, it was a hodge podge of surmises and imagination.”4

  Jazirat al Arab was the brainchild of Aramco’s then Vice-President, Terry Duce, as a public relations scheme in 1949 to promote Ibn al Saud as “the ‘Warrior King,’ descendant of the Wahhabi conquerors of the 1700s and the man destined to unite the Arabian Peninsula.” A feted documentary filmmaker Richard Lyford, who had won an Oscar in 1951 for a widely acclaimed documentary film, Titan, about Michelangelo, was hired for its production. While Ibn Sa’ud was remarkable in his own right, he was certainly no Michelangelo, particularly with the headaches he left behind instead of precious pieces of art. Yet while Aramco circulated images of King ‘Abdel ‘Aziz Ibn Al Sa’ud as the proud warriorstatesman who looked out paternally for his people and spearheaded their development, privately, its American executives described Saudi Arabia as “this land of low pay, slaves, eunuchs, and harems.”5

  Ibn Sa’ud had been dead for three years when Jazirat al Arab had its premiere in 1956 at the Oil Exhibit in Dhahran with his son, King Sa’ud, as the guest of honor. I was allowed to stand in the front row of the bystanders waiting to greet him behind a velvet red rope (in true Hollywood style). His motorcade of glossy black Cadillacs came to a dramatic stop with motorcycles wailing and Saudi flags fluttering, and King Sa’ud stepped onto the red carpet rolled out for him. A tall broad shouldered man with dark sunglasses and a pleasant aura, King Sa’ud was widely seen as having inherited his father’s sensuous smile and charisma. As he came closer to where I stood, being so near to such an important person dissolved me into uncontrollable giggles. “Mama, look! It’s the King! It’s the King!” I yelled, jumping up and down and pointing. King Sa’ud paused in front of me, putting an immediate end to my excited prattle. With an amused gap-toothed smile indulging my childish exuberance, he extended his very big hand and patted my head kindly then continued in large measured steps up the short flight of stairs before disappearing into the Oil Exhibit where my father was designated to show him around before the documentary began.

  Of course in my perception, I saw his large gold square agal as a crown. To me he was a king from the stuff of fairy tales. And he was the stuff of fairy tales: Aramco inspired fairy tales, from the expert image makers in Manhattan. They had calculatingly programmed Jazirat al Arab “for immediate and worldwide release upon the death of His Majesty ‘Abdel ‘Aziz as a psychological contribution to insuring general acceptance to the accession to power of the Crown Prince as a worthy successor to his great father.” The White House chief of protocol even had a telegram of condolence prepared for delivery in March 1952: “The American people were proud to count him and his nation among their most trusted and valued friends,” but had to shelve it when King ‘Abdel Aziz ibn Al Sa’ud hung on to life for another year.6

  The public relations effort continued, further cementing the United States’ special relationship with the Al Sa’uds. A showcase agricultural mission grew food for the King’s palaces, and a new American consulate was opened in Dhahran in 1944 to handle thousands of Americans and their families, who were now pouring into the east coast of Saudi Arabia. Colonel William Eddy, Lebanese-born and Princeton educated, who had translated for Roosevelt in his meeting with Ibn Sa’ud aboard the USS Quincy (kneeling respectfully at the King’s feet), became the ambassador in Jeddah for the rapidly-growing American enclave. Colonel Eddy would eventually quit his post as minister to show his indignant refusal of the United States government’s pro-Zionist policies and sign on with Aramco as a consultant … and undercover CIA agent.

  A US Air Force base was constructed in Dhahran in 1946 and TWA flew ‘Abdel ‘Aziz’s planes under contract and organized the Kingdom’s national airlines. ITT ended the British imperial communication’s monopoly. California’s Bechtel Brothers’ firm operated country-wide as the Kingdom’s de facto public works department, constructing palaces for the royal family, state-of-the-art ports and laying out wide asphalt highways and byways – in short, all that was necessary to offload the oil as efficiently as possible out of Saudi Arabia. The Roosevelt administration began paying a regular stipend to Ibn Sa’ud and funded, armed and trained the ‘barefoot army’ as my father and his Hijazi compatriots would (sotto voce) derisively refer to the Bedouin soldiers.

  Too late, Ibn Sa’ud caught on how little control he now had over his Kingdom: “The whole people are saying that my country is an American colony. They are plotting against me and saying Ibn Sa’ud has given his country to the United States, even the Holy Places. They are talking against me. I have nothing, and my country and my wealth I have delivered into the hands of America.”7

  Ibn Sa’ud’s lament was the sad truth. No colony in the decade after the Second World War gave the United States of America so much for so little. Neither independence nor a rapidly multiplying income could alter the reality of Ibn Sa’ud’s practical powerlessness. He was a canary in a gilded cage.

  Saudi oil was for the Americans, as was so bluntly expressed by President Roosevelt in an altercation with Lord Halifax, the British ambassador to the United States, over the division of the oil of the Middle East post the Second World War: “Persian oil is yours,” he told Lord Halifax. “We share the oil of Iraq and Kuwait. As for Saudi Arabian oil, it is ours.”8

  5

  Yankee Doodle Comes to Town

  I awoke on my top bunk bed to the sound of my mother humming to herself while she noisily dusted the venetian blinds, as usual, first thing in the morning in our bedroom. I jumped down and gave her a hug which was not what I would have done if I had still been living with my parents in Dhahran. The last thing Fatin and I missed since we had left
home was our mother’s manic need to dust our venetian blinds at six in the morning. Energized and excited, I stretched happily. Today was the first day of my summer job at the Administration Building, Aramco’s headquarters. It was routine clerical work, but definitely better than spending the day doing nothing at home. Students returning to visit their parents in Dhahran like Fatin and I were given summer jobs in Aramco to keep them from acts of mischief borne out of boredom. Our presence wasn’t particularly welcomed by Aramco’s employees, who often had to redo many of the tasks we had been given because of our lack of expertise or, indeed, motivation. The hippie movement was in full swing, influencing many returning students with its laid-back modus vivendi and a particular distaste for bathing. Some would go to the extent of rolling in the dust of their back yard before venturing barefoot to the recreation area to parade their ultra cool unkemptness.

  Fatin and I gulped down our breakfast of ‘sweet rose’ (rolls) as Mama called them and scalding Nescafe to the sound of our father’s impatient honks. He was never late to work, not even by a minute. As we set off in the direction of the hospital for my sister’s job, I stared at the streaming traffic of fellow Aramco employees dressed identically in short sleeves and tie, driving white American-manufactured cars with the Aramco insignia stamped in black on the side. It suddenly struck me that an ideal topic for my senior study in sociology was right before my eyes: namely the American social engineering entailed in creating my hometown, Dhahran.